Medieval Christians read Muhammad’s ordinary humanity as religious failure.

Evidence

Many of the stories relating to the death of Muhammad are not obviously discreditable; it was enough that what he did contrasted unfavourably with the sort of thing expected of a Christian saint on his death-bed. San Pedro recalled ‘A’ishah’s description of how great the Prophet’s pain was, how he said that life displeased him. Particular points were to be noted: there were only twenty white hairs in the Prophet’s beard, he died on a Monday in the home of ‘A’ishah, and was buried there where he died, beneath the bed, in the middle of the night of the third day. Again according to ‘A’ishah, he washed his face and poured water on it when he was at the point of death; and Christians were accustomed to say, added San Pedro, that he was trying to baptise himself, but the devils prevented him. … For the author of the reprobatzo, Muhammad made a profane death. As he lay dying he abused the Christians and Jews for making oratories and churches at the tombs of their prophets; ‘note’, said the author sedately, ‘that he sinned in the abuse; what he said following (i.e. as to the fact of the Christian and Jewish custom) was in no way untrue’. … There is nothing disreputable about this; it is even a little touching; but it is not the Christian picture of an edifying death-bed. The very fact that Muhammad was dead, and that Muslims agreed that this was so, whereas Christ had risen to Heaven, was felt to be important: ‘he died, and he lies dead on earth … and this the Muslims affirm’. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 598

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to broader medieval polemic literature: analogous framing of other religious figures’ mundane deaths vs. saintly/Christological death-beds.
• DEEPTHINKING: The argument that a religionist’s death-bed performance itself constitutes theological evidence (not doctrine but drama as proof) is a dense, transferable analytical lens.